site.btaCentral Election Commission: Women at 30.1% of April Election Candidates

Women make up 30.1% of candidates for parliament in the April 19 elections, Central Election Commission Deputy Chair Rositsa Mateva said on Saturday. Their share is up 1.7 percentage points from the October 2024 vote.

There will be 62 more women candidates for parliament in the upcoming elections than in the vote at the end of 2024. The ratio, however, remains in favour of men.

A total of 69 fewer candidates for parliament are registered for the April vote than for the October 27, 2024 election.

For comparison, in the October 27, 2024 elections, women made up 28.4% of all candidates, 1,377 out of 4,855, while men accounted for 71.6%, or 3,478 candidates.

The Share of Women in National Parliaments in the European Union

The data for Bulgaria can be viewed against the backdrop of trends in the EU. The share of women in the national parliaments of EU countries has risen over the past decade, with the exception of Germany, dpa said in early March, citing data published the previous day by Eurostat.

In 2025, women in Bulgaria make up 25% of lawmakers, up by nearly 5.5 percentage points from 2015.

Women held 33.6% of seats in the national parliaments of EU countries in 2025, up 5.4 percentage points from 2015, the data show.

Finland has the highest share of women in parliament in 2025, at 46%, followed by Sweden with 44.8% and Denmark with 44.7%. Cyprus has the lowest share, at 14.3%, followed by Hungary with 15.6% and Romania with 22%.

In most EU countries, the share of women in national governments has also risen compared with 2015. The biggest increase is in Finland. A decline in the share of women is recorded in six EU countries: Romania, Slovenia, Czechia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland.

Candidates for Parliament in Elections

July 11, 2021: 5,079 candidates for parliament, of whom 1,494 were women and 3,585 were men.

November 14, 2021: 5,067 candidates for parliament, of whom 1,515 were women and 3,552 were men.

October 2, 2022: 6,624 candidates for parliament, of whom 1,954 were women and 4,670 were men.

April 2, 2023: 4,566 candidates for parliament, of whom 1,341 were women and 3,225 were men.

June 9, 2024: 6,100 candidates for parliament, of whom 1,826 were women and 4,274 were men.

The April election will be the eighth parliamentary vote since 2021. Regular parliamentary elections were held on April 4, 2021, followed by six snap votes. The April 19 election will be the seventh snap vote after the regular election on April 4, 2021.